The following is a copy of an email message I just sent off to Lady Elderberry informing her of events this morning, and some explanation may be required: Castle Elderberry is experiencing something of a chipmunk invasion (in addition to penguins), and I have been busily trapping the critters and chauffeuring them off to distant locations. I have caught a total of 11 chipmunks in about as many days, and finding one in the trap every morning has become a routine occurence. This is what happened this morning ....

Quote:

I saw that trap had been set off last night or early this morning. The timing was good because I could just take chipmunk #12 to work with me and let him go. As soon as I picked up the cage I noticed it was rather heavy for a chipmunk, and I was thinking maybe I had caught two ... maybe three ... black chipmunks, I saw as I looked inside the trap ... and a fourth perhaps with some white on him ...

PANIC

In my haste to get away, I dropped (perhaps tossed) the trap, and it landed upside down. By the time I got my wits about me (safely hiding behind the truck) and got a tarp out to safely cover up the trap, the skunk discovered it could escape from the upside-down trap and did so. I was forced to retreat again, in face of unfortunate consequences.

OK, maybe you had to be there to appreciate the humor of the situation, but I had a good chuckle, AFTER it was over.

ni! i!u_________________-- Have you seen my goat?

Last edited by Sir Hamster of Elderberry on Tue Dec 02, 2003 6:27 pm; edited 1 time in total

The following is a copy of an email message I just sent off to Lady Elderberry informing her of events this morning, and some explanation may be required: Castle Elderberry is experiencing something of a chipmunk invasion (in addition to penguins), and I have been busily trapping the critters and chauffeuring them off to distant locations. I have caught a total of 11 chipmunks in about as many days, and finding one in the trap every morning has become a routine occurence. This is what happened this morning ....

Quote:

I saw that trap had been set off last night or early this morning. The timing was good because I could just take chipmunk #12 to work with me and let him go. As soon as I picked up the cage I noticed it was rather heavy for a chipmunk, and I was thinking maybe I had caught two ... maybe three ... black chipmunks, I saw as I looked inside the trap ... and a fourth perhaps with some white on him ...

PANIC

In my haste to get away, I dropped (perhaps tossed) the trap, and it landed upside down. By the time I got my wits about me (safely hiding behind the truck) and got a tarp out to safely cover up the trap, the skunk discovered it could escape from the upside-down trap and did so. I was forced to retreat again, in face of unfortunate consequences.

OK, maybe you had to be there to appreciate the humor of the situation, but I had a good chuckle, AFTER it was over.

I can understand your desire to get the chipmunks away, they make all sorts of holes and tunnels in flowerbeds and such. Quite destructive.

We once had a way of getting rid of groundhogs. Find the holes in the ground and drop moth balls in. They don't like moth balls (butterfly balls don't have the same effect) and will move out of the hole.

One hole behind the house that we dropped the moth balls in, kept having the neatly removed and piled near the outside of the hole. We kept shoveling them back in, and the next day they would piled neatly beside the hole again.

Since they seemed to be moved during the night (groundhogs are not too nocturnal), we started checking the hole during the dark hours, only to find a skunk had taken up residence, and was smart enough to move the offending moth balls out of the way.

We never quite found a way to get rid of the skunk by threat of stink, so we had to trap it. Good idea in concept, bad idea when time to relocate it, as Lady Elderberry discovered. We ended up having to tranquilize the skunk, then relocate it

Ah, fun with critters _________________There are no stupid questions, but there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots.

Then there was my college professor who set out a trap to catch a skunk. One morning he noticed the trap was closed, so he wrapped it up in a tarp without exposing himself being sprayed (what I wanted to do), drove up to the nearby mountains, rigged up a way to open the trap from a distance, got to a safe spot, opened the trap ...

I was out doing my power walk a few years ago when I saw a skunk with his snout stuck in a yogurt cup. He couldn't get it off his nose. Now, the skunk really couldn't see, (they're pretty blind anyway), and it was definately going to wander into the street and get hit, so a group of other joggers/sloggers were out there with me and one guy volunteered to take action. He walked right up to it, grabbed the cup off the skunk's snout and did a backward sommersault, landed on his feet and quickly moved away. The skunk was so relieved, it just wiped it's nose, and walked back into the woods by the sidewalk.

Another time I had a cat door so my cat's could come in and out of my house without me getting up and playing the "in" "out" game all day. So I'm cooking in the kitchen and I hear one of my cats come in and start eating out of it's bowl and I turn around, and it's a skunk. Well, I just kept on cooking and when it finished it walked right out through the cat door, which I removed ASAP.

My father had a recurring squirrel problem and to make sure he wasn't recatching the same squirrel he would drop a drop of whiteout on the squirrels back. Sure enough, even though he drove the squirrel 3 miles away, a few days later he caught the same one. So I suggest you mark the little critters and make sure you aren't just moving the same ones over and over.

My father had a recurring squirrel problem and to make sure he wasn't recatching the same squirrel he would drop a drop of whiteout on the squirrels back. Sure enough, even though he drove the squirrel 3 miles away, a few days later he caught the same one. So I suggest you mark the little critters and make sure you aren't just moving the same ones over and over.

Cheers!

Aha! I was beginning to suspect as much. I've caught some of those critter often enough that they are beginning to look familiar. In the future, the chipmunks will go on a much longer trip (or much shorter).

o nm .... hehehe u made it_________________I'm folding at my house (folding at home). Trying ever so diligently to get as menny points as millenium knight does in one week. WISH ME LUCK! [img]http://www.katrinashome.com/nsp_counter.php[/img]
Link to pics of farm goes HERE. (give me a few weeks k?)
someone help me stop with the ellipses PLEASE (plea for help)

It seems likely that I may end up including many threads that I started or participated in, and that may be the nature of the beast. If I found them interesting when the thread was new and active, its very likely I'll find it interesting when I consider it for the archive. I post here a lot. I've never tried to figure out the percentage of topics I participate in, but it's got to be relatively high. It's unlikely I could separate myself from my own interests even if I tried.

The real solution to the problem is to get enough suggestions from other people that my judgement (what little I have ) never enters into it. Time to officially open for suggestions I think.

It seems likely that I may end up including many threads that I started or participated in, and that may be the nature of the beast. If I found them interesting when the thread was new and active, its very likely I'll find it interesting when I consider it for the archive. I post here a lot. I've never tried to figure out the percentage of topics I participate in, but it's got to be relatively high. It's unlikely I could separate myself from my own interests even if I tried.

The real solution to the problem is to get enough suggestions from other people that my judgement (what little I have ) never enters into it. Time to officially open for suggestions I think.